Terrible Trouble and Other Important
Stuff

By James N. Frey

A reader asks:

In your books, you write a lot about plotting,
about building characters
and stories.
What can you teach me about the storytelling en
detail?
I heard about narration, about scenes and
dialogue, about sequels and so
on, but when I´m writing a story, I don't know
how
to use these things.
My teachers told me to be concise and they said
"use telling details!" So I
write scenes, dialogues and descriptions to take
the reader into the story.
But then, the story becomes very long, and I
need three or four scenes
before the first conflict comes. When instead I use
narration to get to
the conflict faster, my writing becomes pale,
boring, and superficial.
What is the mystery about using narration
and scene writing in the right mix?

A fellow creative writing teacher once said to
me, "did you ever notices that beginning writers
always really start a short story on page 7 and a
novel on page 53?"

I told him I wasn't sure it was always exactly 7
and 53 pages, but I knew what he was getting at.
Beginning writers do have a problem getting their
stories going.

That's because the beginning writers falsely
believe they have to "set the stage" and "inform
the reader about past events" before getting on
with the story. Some call these stage setting
openings "narrative sludge,” others, "throat
clearing", which refers to the bad habit of
clumsy public speakers who must first "clear
their throat" with coughs and snorts and so on
before getting on with their speech.

One reason for this all this throat clearing in
fiction writing is because beginning writers
don't trust their readers to wait for the scene
setting to come after the conflicts are underway.
But old pros know you can trust them. Readers
are patient, they will wait to find out the
heroine is a redhead and her mother was a
Parisian, that her sister died in a car crash and
that she’s allergic to pumpkin seeds. An old pro
knows the reader loves to discover the past as the
future unfolds in the story; it’s one of the
delights of reading fiction.

Here is a throat clearing type of opening:

Jason Edson worked in the shipping department at
Hillside Mills in Centerville, Ohio. He was 28,
married, had two children, a boy of six, a girl
of 10. He was tall and slender and had dark
brown eyes. His mother was half Mexican, a great
beauty in her youth, and a devote Catholic. His
father was of English decent from the Boston
area, a welder by trade, and a good and decent
man. Jason was not a great student in school,
but he loved to play baseball and dreamed of
becoming a New York Yankee someday, but he hurt
his elbow in a bicycle accident when he was
eleven and was never good at baseball after that.
He took up the French horn in high school, but
lost interest in it when he saw he’d never be
really good at it.

The shipping department where Jason worked was
one huge room, the size of a football field. The
mill employed a hundred men in the shipping
department alone. The ceiling was made of glass,
so there was always a sort of yellowish glow in
the daytime as the sunlight poured in through the
dusty windows. There were great bolts of cloth
in rolls which needed to be tied into bundles and
shipped in huge orders and loaded onto trucks,
which pulled into the docking bays every evening
to be loaded for the next morning...

Okay, pretty dull, eh? Reading the warning label
on pack of smokes would be more exciting.

It's really very easy to break yourself of this
throat clearing habit, all you need to do is put
a character (can be your hero or another
character) in TERRIBLE TROUBLE from the very
first line.

Let's see what happens when we put our rather
dull hero into TERRIBLE TROUBLE.

When Jason Edson arrived to work at the mill one
rainy tuesday morning, he found a note on his
locker to report to the forman immediately.
Jason at first thought he might be getting a
promotion to shift supervisor, God knows he
deserved it, he'd been putting in overtime
without pay, double checking every order so there
was never a mistake, never staying home sick even
once when he had a bad tooth that felt like his
head would explode.

Thinking he was about to be promoted, he raced
off to to the forman’s office. The shipping
department was one huge room, the size of a
football field. The mill employed a hundred men
in the shipping department alone. The ceiling
was made of glass, so there was always a sort of
yellowish glow in the daytime as the sunlight
poured in through the dusty glass. There were
great bolts of cloth in rolls which needed to be
tied into bundles and shipped in huge orders and
loaded onto trucks, which pulled into the docking
bays every evening to be loaded for the next
morning.

When Jason burst through the door to the forman's
office, he knew immediately this was not about a
promotion. The forman, old Mr. Jenkle, was
seated at this desk, a stern, accusing look on
his face. There were two sheriff's deputies
standing on either side of the desk glaring at
Jason.

"You'd better tell us who's in it with you," one
of the sheriff's said. "We might put a good word
in with the judge if you do."

Jason shook his head, he hadn't the faintest idea
what they were talking about. He rubbed his
elbow. Whenever he was anxious, an old bicycle
injury kicked up--the injury that had ruined his
dreams of becoming a New York Yankee.

The foreman said they wanted to see his locker.

No problem, Jason said, he had nothing to hide.
He was a family man, he said, he had two kids,
he’d never do anything criminal, he’d never risk
prison...

Okay, you’ll notice that the information about
the character, the scene-setting descriptions,
and so on, comes as the story unfolds rather than
as narrative sludge or throat clearing.

Okay, so from now on when you start a story you
will put a character into TERRIBLE TROUBLE right
from the start and you will make sure that the
TERRIBLE TROUBLE gets even more TERRIBLE as the
story unfolds. This is really the most important
thing about being a story teller. Get your
character into TERRIBLE TROUBLE and keep him
there.

You also asked about narration. A fiction writer
uses narration for two reasons. One is to inform
the reader of the antecedent actions--the events
that happened before the now of the story that
are having an impact on the events of the story
the reader is reading. The other use of
narrative is to relate ongoing dramatic actions
to the reader that take place over a period of
time greater than would be practical in a
dramatic scene.

When writing narrative, it is important to
remember that all the techniques you use to make
a scene gripping to the reader--conflict, inner
conflict, emotion, sensuous details, character
development, and so on, are also used when
writing narrative.

Here’s an example of bad narrative. We’ll use
Jason Edson again. Let’s say he’s run away from
the cops and is now on the run:

As he drove, he thought about his wife, Ellen and
how terrible this would be for her. They’d met
at a dance ten years ago in high school and had
dated for six years. Ellen was a good, decent
person, and she worked hard with the kids and to
keep a good home for him....

It’s not horrible because it’s in the context of
TERRIBLE TROUBLE, but it’s really just narrative
sludge. Let’s apply some of the techniques of
the dramatic scene to this:

Jason slowed as he started up the side of the
mountain on the rutted dirt road, here the
ponderosa pines were thick on the side of the
road and he rolled down the window and inhaled
their fresh, clean scent. He remembered taking
Ellen here on their first date, how shy she
seemed holding onto the handle of the door, her
eyes taking furtive glances toward him. He
remembered how she made his insides feel warm,
his heart beat fast. He remembered that same
shyness at the Oak Barrel Motel where they went
on their wedding night, how afraid she was and
how they sat for an hour drinking sour wine as he
stroked her golden yellow hair and kissed her
neck. He remembered, too, how sweetly she looked
at him when he came home from work smelling of
dust and carpet chemicals and sweat, and how she
always hugged him and kissed him, and how her
bright blue eyes sparkled...

Okay, so the same principle applies when doing
dramatic narrative for events that happen over
time as the story unfolds. Beginning writers try
to simply summarize the events and it reads like
summary, not like good fiction. Here’s an
example:

Jason stayed in the mountains all that summer,
stealing food from campers, sleeping in his car,
afraid to contact his wife. Summer turned into
fall, and he took to stealing food from the
kitchen at the ski lodge. He stole blankets and
clothes, always careful not to get caught...

If we simply apply the same techniques to this
that we do to scene writing, it is far more
involving for the reader. Really the only
difference is, time is going by faster:

Jason entered the wilderness area in late August,
and for the first few days, he hid in the thick
ponderosa pine groves, covering his car with
their branches that he tore away from young trees
with his bare hands, cutting his skin and getting
sticky with sweet smelling sap.

Hunger began to gnaw at him on the third day and
he began, he thought, to hallucinate. Ellen
appeared before him, shaking her head--telling
him what? He didn’t know. Should he give
himself up? No, damn it, he hadn’t done
anything, he needed time to think.

On the fourth day he stole a picnic basket full
of succulent ham sandwiches and sour pickles. He
was careful that no one saw him, hiding under the
pine trees, crawling through the thick, damp beds
of pine needles. It was becoming a game, and he
was becoming good at it. He learned to take just
a little, not to be missed, so they would not
even know he was there.

By September the nights were growing colder and
he was missing Ellen and the kids, but he dared
not call. He mother was a devout Mexican
Catholic and she had taught him about Hell, and
she compared it to prisons, which she described
as places of solitary confinement in dank cells,
and horrible beatings by sadistic guards. The
idea that he might be locked up in one of those
terrible places sent a shudder through him.

He awoke one night with a start. He’d been
dreaming of Ellen and she had no face. When he
awoke, he realized the image of her in his mind
was not as sharp as it used to be. He had to see
her, but how?

He was certain the police were watching the
house. He couldn’t take the chance, he couldn’t.
He cried himself to sleep for the next several
nights.

The snows came early that year, large round
flakes the swirled in the strong winds and buried
his car. Heavenly Gate, the ski resort opened
early and he found the old log building had many
old and rusty locks. He was beginning to think
of himself as 'the phantom' -- the master of the
game...

And you will be a master of your game, if you
write dramatic narrative with all the sensuous
detail, emotion, conflict, inner conflict,
character development and so on that you use when
you write scenes.